Yes, we have (pink) bananas!

Our little banana plant, shamefully uprooted from the wild, hasn't grown much (I think the soil is too dry and too poor, we should have planted it in a damper, shadier spot) but I was delighted to see that it has produced some bananas. They're not edible for humans, as they're a mass of seeds, but hopefully the birds may enjoy them.

Time for a plug for Blipfuture. As a former sceptic, it took someone (who's name I unfortunately forget) replying on a comment of mine on one of Barrioboy's blips, plus the combined efforts of Barrioboy and digitaldaze, to prompt me to look further into Blipfuture. I'm now convinced that there's a fantastic team behind this effort to keep our special site alive. I've pledged to acquire shares, though I'm not sure that will actually work, as I live in Brazil, but today I also managed to make a donation and I urge any other latecomers, like me, to step up before it's too late. This site is too good, and our friendships and sense of community too precious, to be allowed to just disappear, with all our memories. Please access https://www.blipfuture.com/invest and/or make a donation via PayPal.

Today has been bliss - no TV and a chance to enjoy the quiet without those irritating voices in the background. As an occasional voice artist (hate the term, but don't know a better one),  I shouldn't be so anti TV sound tracks and automated phone messages, but I do find them supremely anoying. The blessed calm has ended, just as I start my blip - Sky has restored the signal. Booooo!!

No walks for the dogs today. Poor Dookie is very under the weather. He was limping slightly yesterday, but today he can hardly put one of his front paws on the ground. He seems to have skinned one of the pads and there may be more damage further in. This evening, I noticed he was licking his other front leg and realized that there's a warble (gad) fly larva under the pad by his fetlock (or whatever you call the dog equivalent of a horse's fetlock). For anyone who's lucky enough never to have come across a warble fly, these vile creatures lay their eggs on animals or even humans, which then penetrate the skin and form a conical larva under the skin. See here. Our short-haired dogs have been particularly plagued by them, but HH and our daughter have also had them in the past. Very nasty.